‘... I literally, _jumped for joy_--how could such a mercurial creature as a Poet, lumpishly keep his seat on the receipt of the best news from his best Friend--I seized my gilt-headed Wangee rod, an instrument indispensably necessary in my left hand in the moment of Inspiration & Rapture--and stride--stride--quick & quicker--out skipt I among the broomy banks of Nith to muse over my joy by retail.’ Nor did his paternal emotions dissipate themselves in rejoicings over birth. Testimony abounds of his devotion to his children, his concern over their proper education, his anxiety for their futures. James Gray on evening visits in Dumfries found him explaining poetry to the eldest boy and hearing him recite his lessons; Maria Riddell was impressed by his constant devotion to the children’s welfare. But towards their mothers, once the fancy had passed, he was indifferent. ‘I am very sorry for it, but what is done is done’, he said of Meg Cameron, and though Clarinda’s rebuke stung him into something like remorse for his treatment of Jenny Clow, even there his last thought was for his son: ‘I would have taken my boy from her long ago, but she would never consent.’ The one possible exception to his generalization was Jean Armour, but Jean’s later history belongs elsewhere, beside Clarinda’s. In brief, Burns’s experience among women up to his departure for Edinburgh had made him the ‘magerfu’’ man Sentimental Tommy had longed to be. His love-making might involve him in tangles which he was neither astute nor callous enough to avoid, but he had found his attraction enhanced by his reputation as a dangerous man. He had learned the value of aggressiveness; he had not learned finesse. When he met ladies his lack sooner or later became painfully evident. Among women of the upper classes he was at his best in association with those whose interest was motherly rather than actually or potentially amorous. Before going to Edinburgh he had charmed middle-aged Mrs. Stewart of Stair as well as mature Mrs. Lawrie, wife of the minister of Loudoun, and had begun with Mrs. Dunlop a correspondence which ended only on his deathbed. In its progress this friendship reveals much of what was best in his relations with women; in the estrangement which interrupted it it reveals also his shortcomings. Since, moreover, it is the only one of his friendships in which both sides of the correspondence have been preserved, no guess-work is required in tracing its rise and decline.